It's always been my belief that Reconstruction ended too early, and that the South wasn't sufficiently on board with black civil rights and suffrage when it ended. As evidence of this, I would cite Jim Crow and the Black Codes sprouting up after the troops left.

Now, I honestly don't know how long it would've taken to do things the right way, but my feeling is that if Reconstruction had lasted longer, it wouldn't have taken until the 1950's for equal rights in education to come about, and 1965 until the voting rights of blacks were secured.

All of us white folk in the south can't comment ........if we agree, were are just hiding our racism, if we disagree we are racists......we have been labeled that from the start, and it will always continue. No matter what strides are made down here, there are always those that will label us, you saw that in the old 24 forum...

Save America, IMPEACH OBAMA! And continue tossing out the deadbeat Democrats that are currently in office.

It looks like reconstruction ended too late, after too much corruption had set in and too much resentment has set in, resulting in Jim Crow Laws and the KKK.The civil rights laws from the admin of LBJ went way too far in allowing Affirmative Action. This is discrimination against whites, still done to this day. For instance, after honorable and valorous service it trumped "Veteran's Preference", and made it so that to get a good job flying airlines or any multi-engine airplanes, a white male had to have 500 hours of multi-engine time. Minorities and women did not, with requirements waived. The only white males who could get 500 hours ME time were Air Force guys trained at government expense and leaving before that expense had been remotely paid back through service. Quotas were imposed, or attempted. This went for other careers and for school admissions requirements. It was the beginning of the dumbing down of America with some graduating college who were technically illiterate, and becoming teachers to classrooms having a higher and higher percentage of the lower IQ spectrum. This was from the ones here out-breeding the over 100 IQ by 50%, and by the LBJ 1965 Immigration Act which took away the existing population demographics and limits to amount of people coming in to those leaving, and started nearly unlimited third world lower spectrum IQ over-breeding cultures from countries ruined by their own self imposed overpopulation.Slavery should never have been allowed from the beginning of the USA, and blacks here should have had their passage back to Africa paid for by those who had owned slaves. The economic system where slavery was needed, with the political power of slave holders, should never have started. The democratic Republican form of government requires an electorate of informed, knowledgeable voters. What we have instead is a dumbing down society of people manipulated by the media owned by big corporations. The government of the people, is not.Instead we now have the largest fraud perpetrated in our history, in the form of a President who has displayed forged documents, and does not fulfill Constitutional requirements. He is the politically correct color even though he is 1/2 white, 3/8 Arab, and 1/8 black African. I have my doubts as to the validity of most votes, with machines that can be manipulated.The corruption followed by tyranny, feared by Jefferson, did not take long to begin its evil growth. The country has been gripped by an aggressive form of cancer, especially post JFK, in my witnessing.Civil War Reconstruction lasted too long, seeding corruption that Lincoln feared.

Before every action and decision think of the consequences 7 generations into the future....Ute Rule of Life

I'm on my lunch break, so I can only respond to part of this, but I wanted to get to your first statement here:

Quicksilver wrote:It looks like reconstruction ended too late, after too much corruption had set in and too much resentment has set in, resulting in Jim Crow Laws and the KKK.

My impression, from what I've read, is that the KKK sprung up almost immediately after the Civil War ended. I see the KKK as the response of some Confederate soldiers to losing the war, rather than as a response to Reconstruction policies, per se. And the Jim Crow laws were an attempt to keep the freedmen down. Even under the most benign polices (such as Lincoln would have pursued, if he'd lived) the slave-owning society of the South was dead.

That's really why I don't think Reconstruction (meaning the official policy, not the process of rebuilding the nation with civil rights for all, which obviously took much longer) didn't go on long enough. The federal government showed some backbone under Grant, but then esentially left the South alone to make its policies until the 1950's.

I'm not saying that Confederates should've been tried as war criminals or prohibited from voting, as the Radical Republicans wanted to do, but the attitudes of the antebellum South shouldn't have been permitted to bleed into the 20th century.

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slowerMakes you talk a little lowerAbout the things you could not show her."

Millennium wrote:All of us white folk in the south can't comment ........if we agree, were are just hiding our racism, if we disagree we are racists......we have been labeled that from the start, and it will always continue. No matter what strides are made down here, there are always those that will label us, you saw that in the old 24 forum...

I won't label you either way, Mill. My stepfather and I actually disagree on this topic, and he's about as liberal as they come.

There's a strain of thought that says that the main purpose of Reconstruction was to get the nation back together. I do see the value of that, but to allow the states to go their own ways on civil rights issues, as happened when Reconstruction ended, I think did a disservice to all the men who died to settle the question during the Civil War.

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slowerMakes you talk a little lowerAbout the things you could not show her."

the whole idea was badly done from the start, what was needed was a plan which didn't really exist on how to tackle the issues facing the south, instead they just did what they hoped was needed and went on

that never works well cause in doing that you add more issues to the existing ones, after about a year the whole idea needed to be scrapped and rethought but back then the mindset was to keep the south from ever being a threat to the union again and to give the blacks rights

but with the whole plan in ruins and not much being done to tackle the problems the south had little chance of doing anything useful in that situation

silverpop wrote:the whole idea was badly done from the start, what was needed was a plan which didn't really exist on how to tackle the issues facing the south, instead they just did what they hoped was needed and went on.

I think the problem was that the North wasn't really thinking about what the South needed. There wasn't a lot of long-term thinking going on. There was indifference to the plight of the rebels. In my view, that was understandable, but it wasn't very smart.

To a certain degree, I think the North needed to use a heavy hand with the South, but the reconstruction also needed to be physical, with the stipulation that any help the South got would be contingent on full civil rights for the freedmen.

Even if they were in the mood to give such help, I'm not sure if the North was economically capable of it, but ideally, that's what should've happened. If it had, Reconstruction wouldn't have had to take long. As it was, the North wasn't "hands-on" enough. IIRC, with the exception of Grant, the North pretty much left the South to its own devices.

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slowerMakes you talk a little lowerAbout the things you could not show her."